How Tanner Duncan went from ECU club baseball player to the Astros’ farm system
Tanner Duncan and Ben Fox were anxious as they sat in a hotel room in Richmond, Va., in early June of 2017. The next day Duncan would throw a bullpen session for Jim Bittner, a Houston Astros scout.
By morning, Duncan was prepared mentally and physically for the professional baseball tryout. When he arrived at nearby Randolph-Macon College, Duncan found the note Fox, his club-level college coach, had placed in the right-handed pitcher’s cleats.
“TODAY IS THE DAY,” Fox had scribbled on a Quality Inn pad.
“Today” was the day Duncan dazzled the scout. His fastballs popped the catcher’s mitt at 91-92 mph. His slider was working. Every pitch was crossing home plate at knee level. The 6-2, 205-pound 22-year-old was about to realize his lifelong dream.
Thirty minutes into their return trip to North Carolina, while driving his parents’ Ford Expedition, Duncan’s cellphone rang.
“We don’t have any money to give you,” Duncan recalled the Astros scout saying. “All we can give you is a plane ticket and an opportunity.”
“I’ll take it,” Duncan responded almost before Bittner got the words out of his mouth.
Duncan pulled the car off to the road’s shoulder and, along with Fox, screamed with joy at the top of their lungs, hugged each other and cried together. From the time he was 6 years old, when his teammates in T-ball and classmates at school told of desires to be firemen or policemen, Duncan proclaimed he would one day be a professional baseball player.
That day was about to arrive.
After dropping Fox off at his home in Greenville, Duncan arrived home in Tabor City around 9 p.m. What happened over the next 24 hours has been described by Duncan, Fox and Duncan’s parents, Greg and Wendy as a “whirlwind.”
Despite having little idea of what clothes to pack, Wendy washed and cleaned every item possible and stuffed a duffel bag with workout gear, a few shirts and pairs of shorts and two pairs of shoes . . . unable to sleep, Duncan tossed turned and awoke at 3:30 a.m., brushed his teeth and headed at 4 for the one hour drive along with his parents and next-door-neighbor Jodi Harrelson to catch the 6:30 flight out of the Myrtle Beach airport. . . . Unbeknownst to the two of them, Duncan and his cousin, MacKenzie Gore, met in the Atlanta airport. The two spoke briefly, then head off in different directions, Gore to Arizona as a first-round pick of the Padres expected to reach the major leagues in a few seasons, Duncan to Florida with no expectations beyond pitching in professional baseball. . . . upon arriving at the West Palm Beach airport Duncan met Kit Sheetz, another free-agent pitcher signee out of Virginia Tech, and was greeted by the Astros clubhouse manager, who proved to be an expert at good humor to ease the tension and anxiety among the prospects. . . . Duncan arrived at the Astros camp where he was issued a set of shorts and T-shirts in preparation for a physical exam and MRIs on both his elbow and shoulder . . . by late afternoon he was ushered to a hotel.
Two days later, after being cleared by the medical staff, Duncan signed his first professional baseball contract.
From T-ball to club ball
Duncan began playing T-ball when he was 3. His older brother by four years, Andrew, lost interest at an early age and now works in his parents’ business, New South Maintenance, which does right-of-way clearance for power lines and removal of trees.
Through South Columbus High School, Duncan was primarily an infielder with occasional spot duty on the pitcher’s mound. Baseball offers came from nearby Southeastern Community College, Methodist University and Guilford, which also wanted him to play football.
He spurned all the offers to follow a group of about 10 friends who were headed to East Carolina, his athletic career seemingly over.
During orientation, Duncan strolled through a gymnasium where various Greek life and club activities were making their pitches to freshmen. Joe Caracci was there, representing the ECU club baseball team, which was a perennial power and won the 2011 National Club Baseball Association championship.
“You look like a ballplayer,” Caracci said to Duncan. “Come out and play for the club team.”
Duncan was interested but had his sights on making the ECU varsity team. Duncan first tried out for the varsity as a shortstop. Two more attempts as a pitcher also drew rejection.
“I think that it’s kind of a pre-determined thing, before you even step out there,” Duncan said of the tryouts, all of which were under previous ECU coach Billy Godwin. “I don’t think it’s just like that at ECU only. Unless you’re out there and you are lightening it up, or you smoke a 60-yard dash. . . . “
You get cut. In Duncan’s case, you carry “a small” chip on your shoulder to club baseball, he said with a laugh.
Duncan was throwing fastballs in the low 80s at the time, so it was back to playing shortstop for the club team with some spot duty as a pitcher. Then came the NCBA quarterfinals of his sophomore year. Out of pitching against a strong-hitting Delaware team, Duncan responded with seven solid innings in an ECU win.
“That’s when we started calling him ‘Big Game Tanski,’ ” says Fox, who was an assistant coach at the time.
Besides earning a degree in kinesiology over five years at ECU, Duncan played five seasons of club baseball, which is allowable by NCBA rules. Over his final three seasons as a starter, Duncan compiled a 24-2 record and 1.12 earned run average with 260 strikeouts in 185 innings.
Never did he live up to his “Big Game Tanski” nickname better than during the NCBA championship game of 2017 against Central Florida. The game was played in Holly Springs with a capacity crowd of 1,500 at Ting Stadium.
Duncan and the opposing pitcher matched shutout innings through seven innings As Duncan went to the mound for the eighth inning his pitch count had inched up neared 100. If this was, indeed, the final game he would ever pitch, the pitch count was irrelevant. Fox, now the head coach, informed Duncan that his game, and possibly his career, was over if an opposing batter reached base.
“You doubting me?” Duncan snapped at his coach.
Duncan retired the next nine batters in a row, and when ECU pushed across the game’s only run in the bottom of the 10th, “Big Game Tanski” had pitched his team to a NCBA World Series title.
Fewer than a handful of major-league scouts watched Duncan’s 14-strikeout performance, but word about him had gotten around baseball circles that season. Duncan pitched well at the Brunswick Community College varsity team and caught the attention of Brunswick coach Robbie Allen, who contacted a scout he knew. He also struck out 14 in five innings of work against the Louisburg College varsity team. Russ Frazier, the former legendary Louisburg coach, watched that performance and approached Fox after the game.
“Who’s that kid that was pitching for y’all?” Frazier asked Fox.
“He’s a fifth-year senior. We’re trying to get him some looks at the next level,” Fox replied.
Frazier contacted Godwin, the former ECU coach who three times had cut Duncan in tryouts, and now is a scout for the Yankees.
With the attention he was getting, Duncan eagerly awaited the MLB Draft. He waited by his phone through all 40 rounds of the draft, through all 1,200 selection of players, through two distressing days of, once again, not being good enough.
Then the call came from Bittner and, a day later, came the tryout in Virginia.
His debut in 2017 for the Astros in the Rookie Gulf League was impressive. A 2.17 ERA went with eight walks and 31 strikeouts in 37 games. He returned home in the offseason, his daily regiment including workouts at the gym followed by waiting tables in the evening at Captain Juel’s Hurricane seafood restaurant in Little River.
This season, Duncan has pitched at both levels of A ball for the Astros, including five games at Buies Creek. In 16 appearances for Quad Cities in the Midwest League, Duncan has a 2.37 ERA.
“There’s a different kind of maturity that comes with a kid who has gone to college,” Buies Creek pitching coach Drew French said of Duncan. “Tanner’s a mature individual. He understands lingo. He’s easy to talk to. He’s very easy to get things across to. He absorbs the information in a really, really easy way.”
Duncan, who wears the same shoulder-length locks as Jacob deGrom once did, also shares a similar overcoming-the-odds story as the New York Mets pitcher. deGrom was a shortstop his first two seasons at Stetson University before switching to pitching. One of baseball’s best pitchers this season, deGrom was not selected until the ninth round of the 2010 draft.
“I really hope that mine ends up like his, for sure,” Duncan says of deGrom.
No matter if Duncan’s career ends at A ball or he ultimately pitches in the major leagues, he can always look to the first paycheck he received from the Astros. The check, which was framed, represented much more than its $380.03 value.
It will always mean that Duncan overcame all odds to once become a professional baseball player.